Hello everybody! One of the last google software I use is my gmail, mainly since I’ve had it for so long and migrating seems daunting. It’s time however.

I do eventually want to self-host my own email, possibly with something like this: https://docker-mailserver.github.io/docker-mailserver/latest/

But to do that I’d need to set up and maintain stability on a home lab for a short time first, something I can’t do yet because of my living arrangements, which means self-hosted email may be a few years away.

In the mean time, I looked at https://www.startmail.com/ and https://tuta.com/secure-email (since tuta is very highly recommended on lemmy). Sadly, while tuta sounds great, it has the deal breaker (for me) that I can only use their clients.

That’s why I’m leaning more towards startmail, though of course I’ll take advantage of the 7 day free trial before committing to it.

Meanwhile, is there anything else that you can recommend which is:

• an EU company
• privacy and customer first
• crucially can be used with Thunderbird
• that will save me 59.88 Euro a year
• That allows for the creation of folders in the Inbox (I use this constantly for organisation)

A very big bonus would be if I could somehow import my gmail emails to it, in a sensible manner, like I see startmail offering to do. CalDAV support would also be really nice.

Also, I’m thinking for about a year I keep both gmail and whatever I switch to, while having gmail forward everything to the new one, so that I make sure everything has been migrated over there.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: While looking at reviews for various services, I came across a video offering a startmail discount link, so I can now get it at 29.94 Euro for the first year. This makes it a lot more attractive even if I don’t stick with it for more than a year, but I would still love to hear your suggestions or thoughts :)

Edit: since i found that discount link from the video, i decided to try startmail. Im still on the 7 day trial (just meaning i havent been billed yet), but so far i really like it. Ive already started changing my apps/services/websites emails to aliases i set up (the unlimited aliases of startmail are a godsend in this regard), and the importing tool they have really easily copied my gmail emails/folders over to the startmail account. From there, it was a simple matter of moving the folders from the resultant gmail folder to my actual SM inbox where i wanted them, adding the account to thunderbird, and re-setting up the rules for the SM account in Thunderbird. Id still love to hear all your suggestions in case I do decide SM isnt what i need, but so far it seems like its a winner